Cellares, a company specializing in automated cell therapy manufacturing, in collaboration with Mitsui Fudosan, announces the establishment of Japan’s first next-gen commercial production site for CAR-T cell therapies.
The facility is under construction in Kashiwa City, located approximately 30 kilometers northeast of central Tokyo in Chiba Prefecture. The Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) Smart Factory is expected to provide employment to 350 people while enabling scalable and cost-effective cell therapy manufacturing.
The facility, set to open in partnership with Mitsui Fudosan, will use Cellares' technology platforms, the Cell Shuttle and Cell Q, to automate cell therapy manufacturing and quality control. The technology reduces batch prices by up to 50% and eliminates the manufacturing bottlenecks faced by conventional CDMOs that use manual processes. Additionally, the entire Smart Factory will be integrated and optimized to eliminate any downstream bottlenecks as well.
The new site’s impact extends beyond patient care. By accelerating the availability of CAR-T treatments, this initiative has the potential to help advance the development and approval of CAR-T therapeutics in Japan. Once the IDMO Smart Factory is online, technical transfers between Cellares facilities in other regions are expected to be a rapid, software-enabled process.
